Volume 2 Issue 3
Exploring relationship between Personal Values, Consumer Innovativeness and
Consumer Involvement in Indian Consumer Purchases of Small Cars
Sushma Muralie
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between
the concept of personal value and consumption
related behaviour in a very domain specific
situation that is in consumer purchase of auto-
mobiles. Taking consumer attitude as an aspect
of behaviour this study attempts to establish the
role played by consumer specific values in
impacting different attitudes that have been
used to measure consumer innovativeness and
consumer involvement. Marketing firms through
their various acts try to bring in attitudinal
changes among their consumers.This research
is expected to give interesting information on
these attitudinal components which are other-
wise difficult to understand. Although the scale
for measuring innovativeness and involvement
have long been established, these scales only
help in identifying categories of consumers
based on their innovativeness or grade consum-
ers on their level of involvement. The present
research is an attempt to identify and explain
the underlying motives behind the different
dimensions that measure customer's
innovativeness and involvement in their pur-
chase of small cars. The outcome of the study
clearly indicates the influence of multiple values
in consumer attitudes, this research also indi-
cates the subtle combination of values that
differentiate these attitudes in consumers.
Keywords: Personal value, Customer
innovativeness, Customer involvement, Means
and End Theory.
IMJ
October-December 2010
1. Introduction
Personal values are held as abstract, trans -
situational aggregate cognitive categories at the
top of hierarchical cognitive structure. These
categories, concepts and cognitive structures
are declarative knowledge which attaches
meaning to product message (2005,Grunert and
Larsen); it in effect means that it is the consumer's
personal values that give meaning to products.
A consumer's personal instantiations of values
are also referred to as the personal motives
behind a products purchase. According to
Scholderer, Bredahl and Grunert (2003),the
personal values in a product's purchase are the
super ordinate goals that lead to activation of
subordinate goal and behaviour routines that
help achieve these super ordinate goals, imply-
ing that it is the product specific personal values
that dictate behaviour.
Consumer innovativeness and involvement have
known to have paradigmatic impact on con-
sumer decision making and thus are of great
relevance. Where consumer innovation is
conceptualized as a predisposition to buy new
and different products rather than remain with
previous choices and consumption patterns (IM,
Bayus and Mason, 2003), it is an important
concept for marketers as it helps in identifying
innovators and has a direct influence on the
success or failure of any new product. Con-
sumer involvement on the other hand is looked
at as an unobservable state of motivation,
arousal or interest that is evoked by a particular
29 Sushma Muralie
Volume 2 Issue 3
stimulus or situation and has drive properties.
Involvement is little more participating and
enduring in nature. The stimulus for this involve-
ment is believed to come from a product, a
service or a product category. (Beharrell &
Dennison, 1995; Juhl & Poulsen, 2000; Mitchell,
1981; Zaichkowsky, 1985). This research is an
attempt to link the three concepts that are
believed to be largely product specific in a
specific situation of consumer's purchase of
small cars.
2. Theoretical Background
The interest of researchers in the concept of
values in understanding consumer behaviour
began when Rockeach (1973) proposed a set
of instrumental and terminal values. The list of
values developed by Kahle, and Timmer (1983),
was one popular instrument used by many
researchers to understand the relationship
between values and other consumer behaviour
constructs. List of values (LOV) has been used
to define and segment consumers (Kamakura
and Novak 1992, Muller, 1991). Thus began an
era of research using the LOV. Nijmeijer, Worsley
and Astill (2004) used LOV to study the rela-
tionship between values and lifestyle and demo-
graphic factors. Grankvist and Lekedal (2007)
studied on the influence of values in impacting
preferences and reported a positive association
between the value of security and taste pref-
erence and the value of warm relationship and
taste of eco friendly juices. Lea and Worsley
(2005) studied the relationship between con-
sumer beliefs in organic food, personal values
and demography. In the Indian context, Roy and
Goswami (2007) have studied the relationship
between values and purchase frequency among
college youths in the city of Kolkatta. Values and
lifestyles have also been used to give psycho-
graphic profiles of customers of three leading
newspapers in India (Anandan, Mohanraj &
Madhu, 2006).
IMJ
October-December 2010
Research on customer innovativeness and cus-
tomer involvement were largely studied for
understanding the deterministic effect they had
on consumer purchases and hence all the
efforts of researchers were to identify a suitable
scale to measure and categorize their consumer
on this variable (Goldsmith & Hofacker 1991;
Laurent and Kapferer, 1985). Individually inter-
action of one of these concepts with other
consumer behaviour variables has been done
e.g. innovativeness and banking attitude (Lassar,
Manolis, Lassar, 2005), consumer profile and
customer involvement in fresh meat (Verbeke,
Vackier, 2004). The inter-relationship between
involvement and innovativeness in the camera
purchases has been done by Hynes, Niki, Lo
& Stanley in 2006. This research explores the
research gap that exists in understanding the
role of product specific values in shaping con-
sumer attitude of innovation and involvement.
While this research will also attempt to identify
specific values influencing the attitudes, it is also
likely to throw some light on the fundamental
causes for difference between these two con-
sumer attitude constructs.
3. The three scales used in this Research
Three scales have been used to in this research
and the following paragraphs present a brief
discussion on how these have been developed
or adapted from the existing literature for the
purpose of our study.
3.1 Value
According to Rockeach (1973), value is an
enduring belief that a particular mode of con-
duct is superior to the other and value is also
considered an abstract and complex concept
that can provide continuity to consumer
behaviour. Others like Vinson, Scott and.
Lamont (1977.), believe that value may prove
to be one of the most important explanations
and influences on consumer behaviour. Value
30 Sushma Muralie
Volume 2 Issue 3
and emotions are inter - wined in a consump-
tion situation and the values expressed in a
consumption situation are the result of emotion
that accompany the consumption experience,
the consumer being the latent variable that links
the emotion and values.
This research uses the Means and End theory
(Gutman, 1982) to identify the personal values
that are relevant to an individual in their pur-
chase of automobiles. Means and End theory
is normally used as an frame work to establish
the cognitive structures which may be called as
the declarative knowledge that give rise to
meaning to products message. The psychologi-
cal Means and End approach focuses on the
linkage between attributes that exist in the
products at the lower level (the"means"), the
consequences provided by the attributes and
the personal values (the "ends"). In this way
consumers learn to choose from products with
certain attributes to achieve their desired con-
sequence. Means and End theory underlines
why consequences such as, personal values are
important.
The most common method to establish Means
and End chains has been laddering. Laddering
based on Means and End theory refers to an
in-depth one-to-one interviewing technique used
to gain an understanding of how consumers
translate the attributes of the product into
meaningful associations with respect to self. This
is achieved by a series of direct probes using
questions such as why is that important to you?
With the objective of finding connections be-
tween a range of attributes, consequences and
end values.The various means and end struc-
tures emanating from product attributes jointly
form the meaning structure. Value research
helps in developing suitable communication
strategy and helps in segmentation and brand
positioning etc which provide insights into how
consumers reinforce their values through con-
IMJ
October-December 2010
sumption. Jantrania (2002) in her study "Cus-
tomer Value in Organizational Buying: A Means-
End Approach", suggests using these end values
to develop a scale.
3.2 Innovativeness
Innovativeness can be defined as a personality
trait (innate innovativeness) and is "the degree
to which an individual is receptive to new ideas
and makes innovative decisions independently of
the communicated experience of others"
(Midgley and Dowling, 1978; Hirschman,
1980)The typical research to understand
innovativeness began with the quest of re-
searchers to either understand the process of
diffusion of innovation or their interest in
measuring innovativeness to assign consumers
into certain categories like innovator, adopters,
laggards etc. The earliest researchers adopted
the time of adoption concept to measure
innovativeness (Rogers, 1962); however this
came under severe criticism for both method-
ological and theoretical soundness from cri-
tiques such as Midgley and Dowling (1978).
They called innovation as a hypothetical concept
existing in the minds of the researcher postu-
lated to explain observable phenomena, but
existing in the mind of the investigator at a
higher level of abstraction. On the methodologi-
cal front the time adoption method could not
be generalized and findings could not be com-
pared across studies.
In place of time adoption method, Midgley and
Dowling (1978) proposed a cross sectional
approach to measure innovativeness, which was
argued to be a measure of innate innovativeness
of consumers, a personality trait possessed
more or less by every one and which partially
accounted for some observed innovative
behaviour. This however cannot be used in
study of innovativeness in a particular domain.
Given the study findings suggesting little if any,
innovativeness that may overlap across domains
31 Sushma Muralie
Volume 2 Issue 3
or product categories, Hirschman (1980) used
a domain-specific measure of fashion
innovativeness.
According to Midgley and Dowling (1978)
innovativeness does not reflect only buying
behaviour but also a tendency to learn and
adopt innovations within specific domain of
interest. What makes the research on
innovativeness interesting is that innovators have
some specific characteristics. Highly innovative
people tend to take some risk, show greater
social participation, and have higher opinion
leadership scores, be more knowledgeable about
new products, be more involved in the product
category, have greater media exposure and be
heavy users of product of the product category
(Pastore 1999). Goldsmth and Hofacker (1991)
in their seminal work on innovativeness have
developed a simple easily administered scale
that could be adopted any domain of interest
and used in surveys using the above stated
consumer behaviour attitudes. They argue that,
first a multi-item scale helps consumers to sum
up their behaviour and attitude and second the
multi-item scale ensures that the construct is
assessed from a variety of perspectives,which
increases the overall reliability of the scale. We
have used items from this scale to the relation-
ship between these items and product specific
values.
3.3 Involvement
Consumer involvement is defined as a person's
perceived relevance of the object based on
inherent needs and values (Zaichkowsky, 1985).
The concept of involvement originated from
Split-Half theory where the assumption is that
left and right halves of the human brain pro-
cesses the information differently (Mittal, 1987).
Krugman (1965) proposed that there are two
levels of involvement; low and high and asso-
ciated it with split-half theory. Later, consumer
involvement was conceptualized on a con-
IMJ
October-December 2010
tinuum with low and high at the two extremes
of the continuum (Zaickhowsky, 1985).
Importance and interest in the consumer in-
volvement construct has resulted in an exten-
sive body of literature with multitude of defi-
nitions and measurements. This has led to
contradictory viewpoints on what involvement
is and what it is not. For example, some believe
it as perceived personal relevance
(Petty,Cacioppo and Schumann, 1983; Antil,
1984; Richins and Bloch, 1986; Higie and Feick,
1989) while some others consider it as a
motivational state (Mitchell, 1981; Bloch, 1982;
Bloch and Richins, 1983; Greenwald and Leavitt,
1984; Mittal, 1989). Few others considered
consumer involvement in a phenomenological
view (Houston and Rothschild, 1978; Petty and
Cacioppo, 1983; Greenwald and Leavitt, 1984).In
spite of such diverse views; Mittal (1989) argues
that there has been an agreement among
various scholars that consumer involvement is
a motivational force leading to consumer
behaviour and action. Hence, for the study, a
motivational paradigm of consumer involvement
is considered and defined as unobservable state
of arousal and interest and evoked by stimulus
or situations in this case the stimulus being
provided by product-specific values that are
supposed to be having drive properties.
To measure the concept of involvement two
scales have been popularly used. The first,
Zaichkowsky's (1985) Personal Involvement
Inventory (PII),which treats involvement as a
unidimensional construct (20 items are summed
to produce a single score). The second con-
sumer involvement profile (CIP) was multifac-
eted. Laurent and Kapferer (1985) argued that
a consumer's involvement cannot be expressed
in a single score because the type of involve-
ment is as important as its level. (1) the
importance of the product class to the individual
(i.e., the perceived importance of a good or
activity to a particular individual, not its impor-
32 Sushma Muralie
Volume 2 Issue 3
tance in an objective sense) (Havitz & Dimanche,
1990); (2) the pleasure or hedonic value derived
from the product (i.e., involvement in recre-
ational activities is pleasurable for most individu-
als and many authors suggest that the consump-
tion of recreation often results in fun, enjoy-
ment, amusement, fantasy, arousal, and sensory
stimulation) (Csikszentmihalyi,1975; Holbrook
& Hirschman, 1982; Mannell, 1980; McIntyre
and Pigram,1992);(3) the sign or symbolic value
attributed to the product (i.e., people often
purchase a good or leisure service because they
want to belong or differentiate themselves from
others and often is intended to generate
favourable perceptions among other people)
(Havitz & Dimanche, 1990); (4) the risk probabil-
ity associated with a potential miss-purchase;
and (5) the risk consequences associated with
miss-purchase. These risks include time and
effort costs, monetary costs, physical danger,
social risk (e.g., doing what is appropriate within
a social/reference group), and performance risk
(e.g., choosing an activity that fits skill level)
(Brooker, 1984; Cheron & Ritchie, 1982; Selin
& Howard, 1988).
Verbeke and Vackier (2004) in their study on
the effects of consumer involvement in fresh
meat confirm that involvement in meat is a
multidimensional construct including four facets:
pleasure value, symbolic value, risk importance
and risk probability. Kyle, Kerstetter and
Guadagnolo (2002) in their study on market
segmentation using participant involvement have
also found involvement to be a multidimensional
construct. This serves as a basis of choosing the
multidimensional construct given by Laurent and
Kapferer (1985).
4. Research Objectives and Hypotheses
Researchers through their seminal work have
long back established the fact that the concept
of values, innovativeness and involvement are
domain or product specific (Grunert,2005;
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October-December 2010
Goldsmith and Hofacker,1991; Laurent and
Kapferer,1985). The construct of innovativeness
is measured using six facets of consumer
behaviour all having their origin in a specific area
of interest which in our case is consumer
purchase of small cars, while the construct of
involvement measured using five facets is con-
sidered motivational in nature, the state arousal
coming from the product itself. Thus in effect
this research is an attempt to empirically estab-
lish the relationship between values,
innovativeness and involvement.This becomes
the first objective of this research. Based on this
theoretical framework the first hypothesis for
our study is:
H1 Each and every construct measuring con-
sumer innovativeness and consumer involve-
ment is influenced by a set of product specific
values
While establishing the relationship between values
and consumer attitudes may be of theoretical
importance to researchers what is important to
a marketer is how exactly these values influence
attitudes of consumers and hence this becomes
the second objective of our study. Innovativeness
can be defined as a personality trait (innate
innovativeness) and is "the degree to which an
individual is receptive to new ideas and makes
innovation decisions independently of the com-
municated experience of others" (Midgley and
Dowling, 1978; Hirschman, 1980). Apparently
amongst the product specific values that a
consumer seeks in purchase of small cars, it
must be the psychological values that should
have a greater role in influencing consumer
attitude of innovation. Hence the second hy-
pothesis for this research is:
H2 Innovative consumer is influenced by their
need for self respect and freedom values
Involvement is considered as an un-observed
state of arousal and interest evoked by stimulus
or situations having drive properties. Consumer
33 Sushma Muralie
Volume 2 Issue 3
involvement has been related to objects or
levels like product, advertising, message,
programme (Sridhar, 2007). Since Involvement
is such a concept that has its origin in the
product and its related communication, the
third hypothesis is:
H3 Involved consumer is influenced by their
need for utility value like family value and safety
value.
5. Research Methodology
5.1 The Research Instrument
There were three research instruments that
were used in this research. The first one was
the value scale developed using Means and End
Theory as the theoretical base for consumer's
purchase of small cars (Muralie and Mittal,
2010). Second a six item consumer
innovativeness scale developed by Goldsmith
and Hofacker (1991)was adopted suitably to
study the consumer's innovativeness in purchase
of small cars and third a five item consumer
involvement scale (CIP) developed by Laurent
and Kapferer (1985) which was suitably adopted
to study the consumers involvement in pur-
chase of small cars.
The product specific value questionnaire al-
though it was used in the previous research
done by the researchers, and the other con-
sumer innovativeness scale adopted by us had
to be tested for reliability. After checking the
questionnaire for ease of understanding and
clarity by getting the opinion of a few faculty
members and students, the questionnaire was
pre tested with a sample of 30 respondent's .the
product specific value scale after removing one
item had a cronbach alpha score of 0.76. The
consumer innovativeness scale after removing
one item had cronbach alpha scores of 0.70
which although a little low was acceptable
because of the nature of analysis that we were
planning to do with this construct. Some of the
IMJ
October-December 2010
reasons for this low scores could have been
lesser number of items in this scale and also
partly indicative of multi dimensionality of the
construct. The CIP is a multidimensional scale
and cronbach for this was not calculated.
The final questionnaire contained a total of 24
items along with the underlying dimension they
indicated is given in table 1.The respondents
were asked to respond on an 7-point agree-
disagree scale was used (1 stands for strongly
disagree and 7 stands for strongly agree).
5.2 Sample
The unit of investigation for the study was an
individual consumer who was a user of small
cars. Small car in a typical Indian context refers
to a car with an engine capacity of 800 - 1000cc.
These type of cars are hugely popular in India
as they are economical both cost wise as well
as fuel consumption wise. Sample respondents
were chosen from various occupational catego-
ries from the city of Delhi. No restriction was
put on age, sex, educational qualification and
income of individuals as the purpose was to get
a representative sample of customers for our
study. This ensured a representative sample
from the entire city. A total of 500 question-
naires were circulated and out of these 220
filled questionnaires were returned and 215
questionnaires were found acceptable. The
male to female distribution was 38 and 62
percent, respectively and the mean age of
respondents was 38 years.
5.3 Statistical Analysis
Analysis was carried out using SPSS 13.0 for
Windows. Cronbach alphas were calculated for
the two of the three scales that is the product
specific value scale and consumer innovativeness
scale to achieve our objective of predicting
respondent's role of product specific values in
their innovativeness and involvement with the
34 Sushma Muralie
Volume 2 Issue 3
product category.Linear stepwise regression was
used. The different dimensions measuring
innovativeness and involvement were taken as
independent variable and the set of product
specific values as dependent variable.
5.4 Findings
The consumer innovativeness and consumer
involvement variables were treated as indepen-
dent variables, while the product specific value
variables as dependent variables in linear
stepwise multiple Regressions, using F values of
.05 for entry and .10 for removal as criteria.
The cronbach alpha for the product specific
value scale was 0.78 and the consumer inno-
vative scale was 0.70 respectively. For all the
ten variables measuring innovativeness and in-
volvement the coefficient of determination or
R2 was calculated. It is worth while to note that
many researchers have reported low R2 values
in psychographic studies (Villani, 1975; Gensch
and Ranganathn, 1974; Nijmeijer, 2004; Roy and
Goswami, 2007). Our purpose of running re-
gression was to identify some of the reasons
behind a consumers attitude of innovation and
involvement and to enable the marketers to
understand them better, design communicate
strategies specifically addressed to them and
make product specific changes to address this
aspect of consumer behaviour.
The result of stepwise Regression is summarized
in Table 3 and Table 4. The result proves our
objective of the research that product specific
values and consumer attitudes of Innovation and
Involvement are related. The fact that each
construct measuring Innovativeness and Involve-
ment is predicted by a different combination of
values supports our first hypothesis.
A look at the regression results reveal lot of
information on the nature of variables that are
used to measure these attitudes. Maximum
variance (35.3%) is explained by the predictors
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October-December 2010
for media exposure variable, followed by 18.1%
Variance for the personal experience variable
explained by its predictors and 16.2% variance
for the risk importance variable explained by its
predictors. The variance explained for by the
predictors for knowledge of product variable
and hedonism variables was insignificant, a
possible explanation for this is that both these
attitudes may not have their origin in the
product specific values we have used in our
research
A look at the product specific value list reveals
that at least ten product specific values having
a significant impact on shaping consumer atti-
tudes. A number of values are common to the
facets measuring innovativeness and involve-
ment. Economic value is common to both
Social participation and opinion leadership. Self
respect value common to social participation,
media exposure, opinion leadership variable and
sign value. Family value is common to social
participation and media exposure. Inner har-
mony value explaining for variance in both
media exposure and personal importance to
product, safety value predicting both risk prob-
ability and sign value society value shows nega-
tive correlation to opinion leadership variable,
pleasure value positively correlating with per-
sonal importance and negatively with risk prob-
ability. Freedom value commonly explaining
both risk probability and risk importance. Plea-
sure value is positively impacting personal rel-
evance to the product and negatively impacting
risk probability. Environmental value impacting
heavy user, media exposure and risk importance
variable. Socio economic value is negatively
correlated with sign value attitude of an indi-
vidual. Involvement on the other hand is largely
influenced by values from the product itself with
utility values playing a larger influential role,
however marketer need be concerned about
emotions triggered by the product. This proves
our second and third hypothesis.
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Table 1 Different items measuring Values, Innovativeness and Involvement

Statements Dimension
Product Specific Value Scale
1. While buying a new car I would first like to check the cost of buying
and maintaining the car Economic Value
2. Comfort matters most in a car other things don't matter much Comfort Value
3. The car I buy must be approved appreciated by my family members Family Value
4. While buying a car reliability and performance of the car in the
market is most important to me. Security value
5. I would use my self gained knowledge while buying a particular car. Self fulfillment Value
6. I will buy a car that is my choice in terms of design, features etc. Freedom Value
7. I will buy a particular car because it reflects my personality Self Respect Value
8. I will only buy a car that has a mass appeal and is appreciated by all. Social Value
9. I will feel at peace with any car. Inner Harmony Value
10. I will choose a car that's likely to give maximum fun and excitement. Pleasure Value
11. I will not be ready to forego some minor safety aspects for other
benefits in car. Safety Value
12. I am concerned about emissions and will be much bothered about
the environment friendliness of the car. Environmental Value
13. I am conscious about fuel shortage and hence the criterion for
selecting would be the fuel consumption. Socio Economic Value
14. While buying I would certainly think about the congestion a car
causes on the roads, the manoeuvrability, the parking space it requires etc. Society Value
Consumer Innovativeness Scale
15. If I had the resources I would like to own a new model of car as soon as it is
launched Social Participation
16. Compared to people from similar background I have changed cars more
number of times. Heavy User
17. In general I am the first one to know about a latest model of car launched Media Exposure
18. I would want to be the first few owners of a new model of car. Opinion Leadership
19. Generally I am the first one to know about the latest technology
advancement/ models in automobiles much ahead of others. Knowledge
Consumer Involvement Scale
20. I am very particular about the car I drive , it is a very important decision Personal Importance to
product
21. Sometimes you do make mistakes while buying a car. Risk probability
22. When you buy a car its hard to make a wrong choice Risk Importance
23. I cant say that I particularly like the car I drive Hedonism
24. You can really tell a person from the car that he or she drives Sign Value

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Table 2 - Results of Stepwise Linear Regression for Consumer Innovation Vari-

ables
Item B SEB Beta t p(t)
Social Participation
Self Respect Value 0.352 0.69 0.332 5.103 0.000
Economic Value 0.364 0.111 0.219 3.284 0.001
Family Value -0.196 0.88 -0.150 -2.217 0.28
r= 0.371 R2 = 0.138 Adj. R2 = 0.126 F = 3/215 (11.288) P <0.001

Heavy User
Freedom Value 0.352 0.69 0.332 5.103 0.000
Environmental Value 0.364 0.111 0.219 3.284 0.001
Society Value -0.196 0.88 -0.150 -2.217 0.28
r= 0.372 R2 = 0.139 Adj. R2 = 0.126 F = 3/212 (11.366) P <0.001
Media Exposure
Environmental Value 0.414 0.065 0.385 6.391 0 .000
Comfort Value -0.343 0.063 -0.315 5.422 0 .000
Self Respect Value 0.286 0.060 0.271 4.735 0 .000
Family Value 0.215 0.079 0.165 2.723 0.007
Inner harmony Value -0.126 0.056 0.129 2.248 0.26
r= 0..594 R2 = 0..353 Adj. R2 = 0.337 F 5/210 (22.881) P <0.001
Opinion Leadership
Self Respect Value 0.306 0.65 0.302 4.686 0.000
Society Value -0.216 0.80 -0.182 -3.712 0.007
Economic Value 0.224 0.105 0.142 2.123 0.35
r= 0.37 R2 = 0.140 Adj. R2 = 0.128 F = 3/211 (11.446) P <0.001

Knowledge in Product - Insignificant

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Table 3 Results of Stepwise Linear Regression for Consumer Involvement Variables

Personal Importance
to product
Family Value 0.372 0.70 0.338 5.320 0.000
Inner Harmony Value 0.173 0.52 0.209 3.293 0.001
Pleasure Value 0.143 0.57 0.161 2.501 0.013
2 2
r= 0.425 R = 0.181 Adj. R = 0.126 F = 3/215 (15.618) P <0.001

Risk probability
Safety Value 0.176 0.047 0.247 3.765 0.000
Pleasure Value -0174 0.053 -0.231 -3.314 0.001
Freedom Value 0.125 0.049 0.166 2.531 0.012
Social Value 0.115 0.054 0.147 2.151 0.033
Comfort Value -0.104 0.052 -0.133 -2.055 0.041
r= 0..0.356 R2 = 0.127 Adj. R2 = 0.106 F = 5/210 (6.100) P <0.001

Risk Importance
Environmental Value 0.171 0.054 0.207 3.183 0.002
Society Value 0.184 0.061 0.193 3.010 0.003
Social Value 0.143 0.053 0.170 2.697 0.008
Freedom Value 0.110 0.052 0.136 2.113 0.036
r= 0.4031 R2 = 0.162 Adj. R2 = 0.146 F = 4/211 (10.207) P <0.001

Hedonism
Insignificant
Sign value
Self Respect Value 0.200 0.071 0.195 2.826 0.005
Safety Value -0.166 0.061 -0.172 2.711 0.007
Pleasure Value 0.168 0.070 0.165 2.384 0.018
Socio Economic Value -0.165 0.067 -0.158 -2.480 0.014
Economic Value 0.214 0.103 0.133 2.084 0.38
r= 0.411 R2 = 0.169 Adj. R2 = 0.149 F = 5/210 (8.514) P <0.001

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6. Discussion
The findings reveal a lot of information for
marketers to enable them to understand their
consumer's attitudes better. We will first discuss
the regression results for consumer
Innovativeness. This was measured using five
facets out of which the regression results
revealed that the variance explained by the
predictors for the knowledge in product to be
insignificant and hence rejected for further
analysis. Now the four aspects of innovativeness
under study are discussed further. First, social
participation is influenced by a the consumers
desire for self respect and data reveals that they
would do so only if economics permits them.
Second, an attitude to change cars that is heavy
users are influenced by the desire to choose;
also these consumers show greater environ-
mental concerns. Third, an attitude to be aware
of the latest launches - Media exposure is
perhaps linked to environmental concerns, self
respect, consideration for family happiness and
is also linked to the product's ability to give a
sense of peace. Fourth, opinion leadership is
influenced by desire for self respect the product
gives, its cost and its impact on society.
A brief look at the entire concept of
innovativeness reveals that the two dimension
of social participation and opinion leadership
though very similar in nature are influenced by
the same variables which is self respect value
and economic value.Yet opinion leadership
does not get influenced by society value whereas
social participation is influenced by family value.
This result in itself shows the ability of this
regression result to predict subtle differences in
the dimension based on the influence of values.
The inference for marketers is that innovation
as a concept although very individualistic also
gets influenced by other set of values, eco-
nomic dimension being one amongst them.
IMJ
October-December 2010
Thus, we may conclude that economics will
always impact consumers innovativeness. Simi-
larly when we look at the heavy user variable
we find heavy users are being influenced by their
preference for choice, but they cannot be easily
influenced to buy something that is not eco-
friendly.
Similarly, the construct of involvement was
measured using five facets out of which the
variance explained by the predictors for hedo-
nism were found to be insignificant and not
considered further. The first facet under discus-
sion is the aspect of personal importance to
product.The results reveal this to be influenced
by family value, inner harmony value and
pleasure value, indicating perhaps that an Indian
consumer attaches personal importance to a
product because of her/his concern for the
family. She/he considers a car as an item that
gives pleasure and owning a car gives them
inner harmony. The second and third aspect of
discussion are the attitude of risk both in terms
of importance and probability. Both originating
from typical values arising from the usage of
product and emotional components. Fourth,
the attitude of considering a car symbolically and
this is linked to self respect value and pleasure
value with negative correlation to safety value.
Thus we can conclude that involvement as a
concept is influenced largely by values inherently
arising from usage of the product per se (may
be called as utility values) and the other part
is the emotional value such as inner harmony
value and pleasure value. What we find inter-
esting is the absence of a large influence by the
environmental and society value.
A comparison between the two constructs of
innovativeness and involvement reveals
innovativeness as innate and individualistic and
largely influenced by specific values which may
largely have its origin in human emotions, with
the product specific values also featuring as an
39 Sushma Muralie
Volume 2 Issue 3
influence. A note of caution from researchers,
the three concepts considered here is domain
specific and hence no general suggestions can
be made for across the board category of
products.
7. Limitation
The concept of value itself is not adept at
suggesting an answer to consumer attitudes. An
individual's purchase behaviour is also impacted
by other demographic variables like age, in-
come, level of education etc. Besides this usage
pattern, usage rate are also likely to impact the
values and attitudes of individuals. This research
was carried out in the NCR region of Delhi,
the situation in other cities of India may not be
similar and hence a broad conclusion about
certain values impacting certain attitudes cannot
be made with certainty.
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Authors Profile
Sushma Muralie is a research scholar in
Guru Gobind Singh University, New Delhi.
41 Sushma Muralie